OXFORD, Miss. — Larry
Brown,
a firefighter turned author who wrote of the poor rural South and the consequences
of life there, died Wednesday at his home in the Tula community near Oxford.
He was 53.

Funeral arrangements were pending. Survivors
include Browns wife, Mary Annie Brown, two sons, a daughter and his mother.

Browns publisher, Algonquin
Books in North Carolina, said Brown died of a heart attack. Lafayette County
Coroner Lonnie
Weaver said the cause
of Browns death would be determined after an autopsy. Weaver said Brown
was dead when emergency medical crews arrived at his home shortly after
8 a.m.

Born July 9, 1951, in Oxford, Brown briefly attended the University of
Mississippi and learned the craft of writing in large measure by avid reading.

Brown served in the U.S. Marine Corps from
1970 to 1972. He worked as an Oxford firefighter from 1973 until 1990,
when he retired to begin his full-time writing career.

“Im just paralyzed — like
most people when they lose a loved one they admire,” Oxford writer Barry
Hannah told The Oxford Eagle in a telephone interview from San Marcos,
Texas,
where he is teaching.

Hannah said he had watched his friends
growing success with pride, from the time his work first began appearing
in magazines and journals in the
mid-1980s to his most recent novel, The Rabbit Factory (2003).

“Everywhere I go, I brag about Larry
Brown and what hard work and discipline brought to him as an artist,” Hannah
said. “Its close
and deep and very sorrowful. But he is a marvelous inspiration to those
who need toughness.”

Brown served as creative writing instructor
at the University of Mississippi in spring 1998, filling in for longtime
writer-in-residence Hannah, who had taken a leave of absence. UM Department
of English chair Joe Urgo described Browns death as “a sudden and
unexpected loss.”

“Larry Brown was among the very best
contemporary writers in the United States, and another powerful literary
voice to emerge from Oxford
and Lafayette County,” Urgo said. “Although he had no formal
affiliation with the Department of English, we receive inquiries about
him and his work from readers around the world quite frequently.

“Mr. Browns passing abruptly ends
a career that many readers had all reason to look forward to enjoying for
years to come. Well, now, of
course, we can re-read the books and come to know that Larry Brown will
never really leave us.”

Browns first book was a collection
of stories called Facing the
Music, published in 1988, followed in 1989 by his first novel, Dirty
Work, which was inspired in part by his fathers experiences in World
War II.

“As a writer he had the advantage
of growing up in a place where people knew each other deeply, and that
showed in his work,” Oxford
mayor and Square Books owner Richard Howorth said, recalling Brown as “a
generous and loving person.”

Browns books included Big Bad
Love (1990),
which depicted marital malaise of varying degrees, and the novel Joe (1991),
in which he teamed up the title character, a hard-drinking ex-convict who
heads up a forest defoliation crew, with 15-year-old Gary Jones, the son
of a truly
evil no-count drunk migrant worker.

Big Bad Love caught the attention
of actress Debra Winger and her husband, director Arliss Howard. The two
produced and starred in a film adaptation of the same name in 2001.

In 2002, filmmaker Gary Hawkins created
a documentary about the writer and his life entitled The Rough South
of Larry Brown.